Thursday was tough for the Liberal Democrats and we need to be frank about that. From a personal point of view, the results were very, very difficult to take. But I'm also realistic: these were the first Liberal Democrat mid-terms in 80 years, in difficult times. That gives the results a sense of inevitability.

Our councillors and activists across the country have been working tirelessly in this very tough election. Many have spent years being true local champions. Losing Lib Dem councils will be a great loss to the communities they've represented: Carl Minns worked hard to get green jobs to the docks in Hull, Paul Scriven turned Sheffield's schools around, Dave Goddard kept libraries and Sure Start Centres open in Stockport – the list goes on. Losing valued colleagues was not pleasant.

The question now is, why did this happen and what's next? It's easy, too easy, to point the finger at the coalition. I know a lot of people are unhappy that we are making the incredibly difficult decisions in government with the Conservatives. Some may even think we are doing this because we like it, that we like the fact of being in power. Well, let me reassure you: if I had had a choice, I certainly would not have chosen the timing nor to be in a coalition. I'd much rather have entered government on our own, in times of plenty. I did not go into politics to cut spending.

I am convinced we're doing this for the right reasons and that the current course is a necessary, though painful one. Thanks to the mess we inherited, we are still borrowing £400m every single day, just to get by – the cost of building a primary school every 20 minutes.

Just last month, the US – until recently Ed Balls's most favoured comparison – was warned that its credit rating was under threat because it has so far failed to deal with its deficit. Now, the US may be able to weather a downgrade, but after Portugal, Greece and Ireland, the UK could not have done so. Thanks to our work, the UK is now being cited as an example to other troubled economies.

That does not mean people are not disappointed in us and have turned to other parties to register their protest – Labour in places where they were the only alternative to the Lib Dems: Hull, Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield.

But Labour hasn't managed to really convince people. Every single election analyst said Labour should gain at least 1,000 seats to prove it is on the way up but it hasn't. In Scotland, the people dealt Labour a resounding defeat – because Scotland was a place where, if you didn't like the coalition, you didn't have to vote Labour and people jumped at the chance to give all three main parties a pasting.

History too shows that gains in local council elections do not always mean parties have won the public argument. In 1981 Labour gained 988 council seats, just before Michael Foot took the party to its greatest ever election defeat, and William Hague closely followed his example in 1999. Miliband will know that these are results that he cannot be triumphant about.

So where do we go from here? We said from the outset that this would be a five-year coalition and so it should be. There is a lot of work still to be done and this government is better for Liberal Democrats being part of it. We will continue to fight for Liberal Democrat values: making sure the government listens to the people's widespread concerns on the NHS, continues raising the income tax threshold to help millions of people out there, improves social mobility and, last but not least, abides by the coalition agreement on reform of the House of Lords.

We took a battering on Thursday, but we kept three-quarters of the seats we defended and registered a sixth of the national vote – so these were bad, bad results, but not the apocalypse that some folks would have you believe. What we must not do, though, is just shrug these results off as if they are just a bad bit of electoral weather that will change for the better if we just sit and wait.

We need to go out and make the weather ourselves. Thursday showed us that we must assert our identity as a radical and progressive party, demonstrate that we are making a real difference for our communities and prove that we listen and learn. I know that especially in Scotland, Wales and the great cities of the north there are real anxieties about the deficit reduction plans – we understand those concerns.

The website ConservativeHome reminded us only this week – slightly reluctantly – that 75% of the Lib Dem manifesto is in the coalition agreement, as opposed to only 60% of the Tory manifesto. Our job is to convince voters – especially those who have left us this time – that the fear they had of the Thatcher years returning was unwarranted.

These 'mid-terms' have been tough for us. I will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Nick Clegg and keep on fighting for the things that we believe in. Our policies are as radical and progressive today as they were a year ago; the difference is that we now have a chance to put them into practice. We must and will show people that a Lib Dem vote is one to be proud of.

The scale of the Nationalists' win is so great that Labour might never recover, with profound consequences not only in Holyrood but in Westminster. Independence for Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom suddenly seems possible